Slow Cooker Beef Ragu
Jump to RecipeBeef ragu is what you make when you want pasta sauce to have the emotional weight of a Sunday afternoon. Chuck roast goes into the slow cooker with crushed tomatoes, tomato paste, beef broth, onion, garlic, Italian seasoning, and red pepper flakes, then stays there long enough to stop being cubes of beef and start becoming part of the sauce.
Searing the chuck first is worth the extra skillet. Two or three minutes per side creates a browned crust that brings roasted flavor into a sauce otherwise built almost entirely in a moist environment. Once the beef is fork-tender, shred it directly into the tomato mixture and stir until the strands are coated. Pappardelle is especially good here because the wide ribbons catch the heavy sauce, although rigatoni has the useful advantage of trapping little pieces of beef inside like edible cargo containers.
Finish with Parmesan and fresh basil. The recipe is hands-off after the initial sear, but the long cook does something a 20-minute meat sauce cannot fake: collagen softens, beef flavor moves into the tomatoes, and the sauce becomes rich enough to cling to pasta without needing a mountain of cheese to save it.
